(2 days)

Buy-in.  Commitment.  Good-will.  Trust.  These are qualities that project teams prize in their relationships with stakeholders.  Productive project/stakeholder relationships can be a pivotal factor in determining whether a project is completed on time, on budget, on quality, and with a minimum of tension.  The question is: how can a project team successfully and purposefully create positive relationships with stakeholders while maintaining project integrity?

Project teams can employ a systematic-yet-flexible approach to create productive stakeholder relationships.  In this workshop, participants will learn to:

• Identify and map multiple stakeholders
  
• Earn credibility and trust
  
• Create relationship management plans
  
• Influence, collaborate, and negotiate with stakeholders
  
• Respond to relationship issues arising from the dynamic changes associated with projects
  

Workshop Outline

1. Foundations of Effective Stakeholder Relationships

• Defining stakes and stakeholders
  
• One stakeholder vs. multiple stakeholders
  
• Challenges and rewards of managing stakeholder relationships
  
• Key Principles of stakeholder relationship management
  
• Relationship Management Process Overview
  
• Roles of Project Sponsors, Project Managers, and Team Members
  
• Building trust and credibility
  

2. Stakeholder Analysis

• Identification of project stakeholders – individuals and groups
  
• Identification and validation of stakeholder needs and interests
  
• Stakeholder multi-mapping and classification: practical, powerful models and tools
  
• Impact of phases in the project management lifecycle
  
• Setting realistic targets for degree and type of relationship required with each stakeholder to ensure project success
  
• Stakeholder relationship risk assessment
  
• Stakeholder issue-tracking
  

3. Creating Productive Stakeholder Relationships: Strategies and Plans

• Selling problems, sharing solutions
  
• Key relationship-building strategies
  
• Key influence strategies
  
• Strategic relationship and influence planning - matching approaches to situational needs, resources, and constraints
  
• Determining appropriate levels and methods of stakeholder participation
  
• Capitalizing on useful and available channels of influence
  
• Impact of various communication techniques
  
• Action-planning and tracking
  

4. Maintaining Positive Stakeholder Relationships

• Ongoing stakeholder relationship assessment
  
• Changing situations, changing relationships, changing strategies, changing plans
  
• Ongoing issue identification and resolution: processes and tools
  
• What can go wrong – and how to get back on track
  
• Resolving conflict: win-win tactics to strengthen the relationship and project
  
• Maintaining trust, credibility and good will during challenging situations
  

(3 days)

As pressure increases on organizations to be more responsive to stakeholders and citizens, public consultations have become recognized as a time-efficient, cost-effective method of assessing their needs and interests. 

This workshop will provide learners with the skills necessary to manage a public consultation from start to finish.  Participants will also practice using decision-making tools that can help leaders make decisions based on the outcome of consultations - even when stakeholder groups do not agree with one another.

By the end of this workshop, you will be able to:

• Identify opportunities for public consultations
  
• Determine the relative weight that will be given to information collected through consultation
• Explain the steps in organizing a consultation event
  
• Design a consultation, choosing from a variety of methods
  
• Facilitate a public consultation event
  
• Manage group dynamics
  
• Use audio-visual aids
  
• Summarize and prioritize information
  
• Analyze data
  
• Apply decision-making tools to the information collected

(2 days)

Projects are designed to help organizations meet business goals.  They reflect technical decisions about how to do things faster, more accurately, with greater compliance, or less expense.  It is assumed that if the technical strategy is sound, the project will succeed.

However, a project’s degree of success can more accurately be summarized by the following equation:

Project design is typically concerned with the Quality side of this equation.  However, even projects of the highest Quality can be derailed if stakeholders do not Accept them.  Acceptance is concerned with the human and organizational culture issues involved in making change happen.  When a project receives low Acceptance, it will be resisted - sometimes by the very people it could benefit most.  Resistance  in any form is frustrating, time-consuming and expensive.

This workshop will provide project leaders with the strategies and tools required to build a project-specific Change Acceleration plan, gain project Acceptance, and create sustainable change.

By the end of this workshop, you will apply the concepts, tools and techniques of Change Acceleration to build project-specific Change Acceleration plans, gain project Acceptance, and create sustainable change.

Workshop Outline

1. The Impact of Acceptance factors on Project Success
   
2. Technical Change versus Human Transition
   
3. Determining when Change Acceleration is Needed
   
4. Assessing Organization Readiness
   
5. Seven Key Processes of Change Acceleration
   
6. How and When to Use Over 15 Practical Tools and Templates
   
7. Hands-On Practice with a Minimum of 10 Tools
   
8. Matching Acceleration Strategies to Project Stages and Stakeholders
   
9. Techniques for Ensuring Lasting Change
   
10. Building an Integrated Change Acceleration Plan